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Company Magazine provides a bi-weekly email version of these news items concerning events and works of the Jesuits and their colleagues. This service duplicates in large part the contents these pages -- however it often contains a few extra items. It is called the JesuitUSA News Service. Subscription to this email service is free. If you wish to be put on the mailing list, simply send an email message to news@companymagazine.org which contains both your name and your email address.
Long before novelist Mary Doria Russell sent the Society to outer space in her novel "The Sparrow," Jesuits were on the moon--at least their names were. According to Joseph McDonnell, SJ, the International Astronomical Union has recently codified lunar nomenclatura eliminating conflicts and duplications. The new list has 35 lunar craters named after Jesuits: 10 Italians, 6 Germans, 5 French, 3 Hungarians, 2 Swiss, 2 Austrians, 2 Belgians, and one each from Croatia, Holland, Spain, Scotland, and the US.
For centuries the basic map used for lunar nomenclatura was the one drawn in 1645 by Jesuit optician Francesco Grimaldi (1613-1663). Grimaldi's map includes crater names invented by fellow Jesuit Giovanni Riccioli. Riccioli's assignment of some of the brightest craters to Copernicans--Kepler, Galileo, Lansberg, and Copernicus himself--has always been a bit of a puzzle, since as a Jesuit, Riccioli staunchly upheld the doctrine of a fixed and central earth. He claimed to have flung the heliocentrists into the Sea of Storms (Oceanus Procellarum), but some wonder if he did not reveal here a secret fondness for the Copernican doctrine, especially since he named two nearby craters Grimaldus and Ricciolus, while other Jesuit astronomers were assigned to craters in the south, surrounding Tycho.
A first printing of the Grimaldi/Riccioli map can be found in the special collections of Woodstock Theological Center Library, Georgetown University. [Source: News & Features; Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, Mo.]
"Agaronia Jesuitarum" is the officially registered name of a type of shell found by Jesuits on the Nicaraguan beaches.
When Teresa of Avila's reform of the Carmelites had begun, one of the Jesuits was sent up from Rome to inspect the workings of the new convents. He was due to come to a particular convent, and the young abbess (who might have been her niece), wrote to Teresa, asking her how she should comport herself with the Jesuit priest. Should she be cool and distant?
Teresa responded, "You should by all means make every effort to welcome him. We need their support if our reforms are ever going to be approved by Rome. Make up questions to ask him, as that is what they like ..." [400 years later, it's STILL true!]
Links to Synopses of the Decrees.
